WHO & UN Team Up To Combat Climate Change
Call Issued For
“All Hands On Deck”
The
World Health Organization and the United Nations Climate Change
Secretariat have signed a new memorandum of understanding at a meeting
in Bonn Germany to better protect and enhance health as an essential
pillar of sustainable development. The agreement will help ensure a
strategic collaboration between the two world bodies and provide a
focus on health as part of the larger effort to mitigate climate
change.
Patricia
Espinosa,
head of the UN Climate Change effort, told the group “The Paris
Climate Change Agreement needs all hands on deck if we are to ensure a
healthy world and healthy citizens now and into the future.”
The
Director General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told the
meeting that climate change is one of the most pressing public health
threats and the health of future generations depends on concrete
actions we take now. He noted that for certain island populations
climate change is not a political argument but an everyday reality.
Mechanisms
Climate
change operates to impact health because the consequences of extreme
weather events and variable climate affect 1) clean air, 2) safe
drinking water, 3) food security, and 4) secure shelter. These in turn
directly impact health. According to the communique, these
consequences could cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per
year from heatstress, malnutrition, diarrhea, and malaria between 2030
and 2050.
Warning
Labels
In
striking remarks to the Bonn attendees reported by the Thomson Reuters
Foundation, former California governor and Hollywood actor Arnold
Schwarznegger called for “slapping” a public health warning on
fossil fuels much like the warnings on cigarette packages inspired by
the 164 nation tobacco control pact in 2003. He suggested telling
customers at gas stations that “what you pump into your tank may kill
you” and adding similar messages on oil trucks driving along the
highways.
Schwarznegger said more than 9 million people are killed each year by
environmental pollution (see related story in this issue) most of it
from air pollution, and the topic is only rarely discussed in
connection with climate change.
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